


Empathy Games

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 14:09:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17245595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: “And?” Elias leans forward, glacier-slow. “Are you feeling any more reasonable?”“Why don’t you tell me?” Tim demands, his voice tight and angry. He’s not thinking. Hasn’t even considered what might come of such a foolhardy offer. Elias is not in the mood to let it go by unpunished.





	Empathy Games

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anysin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anysin/gifts).



Elias has an excellent sense of timing. He’s honed it over years, practices like a musician with their instrument, and it is ever-rewarding. It had let him start Barnabas Bennett’s statement at such a point that he didn’t waste any tape waiting for the others to arrive, had let him kill Leitner in less time than it had taken Jon to smoke a cigarette.

Now, it lets him step into the corridor leading from the library back towards the Archives, just as Tim passes the last door between them. Tim sees him, and there’s a brief flicker of something in his face. On Martin, it would have been fear. Hatred from Melanie, a controlled wariness from Basira. Tim’s is somewhere closer to contempt, and instead of turning around or pressing in against the wall, he quickens his pace, jaw set.

That, Elias thinks, will have to be taken in hand.

“Ah,” he says, keeps his voice casual, as though it’s a chance meeting, as though he hadn’t been waiting for him, as though he hadn’t been watching. “Tim.”

Tim clearly judges neither word worth his time to respond to, his grip tightening around the book he’s taken out as though he’s considering hitting him with it. Elias doesn’t need to read the title to know that it if he did, it would be something to do with the circus.

“I’m glad I’ve caught you,” Elias says. “I’ve been meaning to have a talk-”

“Yeah.” Tim doesn’t slow his approach, and Elias has to physically move to block his path down the corridor to get him to stop. Even when he does, it’s an insolent thing, all glaring and moving in just a little too close, trying to intimidate him out of the way. “You said.”

“And?” Elias leans forward, glacier-slow. “Are you feeling any more reasonable?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Tim demands, his voice tight and angry. He’s not thinking. Hasn’t even considered what might come of such a foolhardy offer. Elias is not in the mood to let it go by unpunished.

The first thing in Tim’s head is exactly what he wants Elias to see – all curses and images of his fist cracking into Elias’ face, blood spraying and bones breaking. Elias has seen that sort of thing enough times before to be bored by it, so he rifles through Tim’s surface thoughts instead – he’s waiting to feel the intrusion, Elias notes. He’s sure there’ll be some sort of sensation, something he’ll notice, be conscious of. He thinks it should hurt. Next time, Elias decides, it will. But for now, he doesn’t feel anything, and he won’t. As far as he’s concerned, Elias is just standing there, watching him, the intensity of it mosquito-whine uncomfortable.

Tim checks his watch, so minutely that Elias wouldn’t have noticed if he had been anyone else. It’s the barest inclination of his wrist, the merest hint at a glance, and Elias seizes on it, digging deeper into his head after the reason, what he thinks he might be late for, pushing aside the clotting names of old lovers and birthday presents Danny had got him.

He had been on his way back, not to the tunnels or the safe room as he usually is, but to the Archives themselves. He had walked through them on his way up, and he had heard Martin’s voice from Jon’s office, muffled through the door, reading a statement. He wants to get back before he finishes it. Martin looks for him, sometimes, afterwards, and Tim doesn’t know why, but he still wants to be there so that he can be found.

Elias extends his sight, almost lazily, down towards the Archives. Martin has already finished. This one was shorter than usual, and he’s tired with it, scared of it, and, so deep that he probably isn’t even aware of it, he needs to be reassured that he’s still himself. Needs to be made to feel like it.

Back in Tim’s head, Elias skims away the opening chords to his favourite song, and picks out the memories he’s looking for, like a swallow taking flies from a stream. Tim’s mind ripples, sometimes, with uncertainty over what Martin could be, what he might become, what Sasha had been, but he can’t let go of him. Hasn’t been able to since those corridors – Elias feels Tim’s hand gripping Martin’s as he drags him through right turn after right turn, trying to keep away from the monster that follows them, its reach lengthening in every mirror he looks at. A press of lips to keep them grounded, both an explanation and a last, reckless thing that would never go anywhere. And then it had done, hours of late night calls as they’d tried and failed to learn how to be apart again.

“Yeah,” Tim says, the urgency in his mind finally ticking past the assumption that Elias would actually do something. “No change. So unless you’ve changed your mind about killing me, fuck off.”

“We’ll see,” Elias says. He already has, all he needs to. He moves aside to let Tim pass, and considers letting him know which section of the Archives Martin’s in, and what angle he would most appreciate being fucked at, but he manages to hold his tongue, if not his smile. He’ll give them a little time, while he observes, and in the meantime, he wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.

* * *

Tim doesn’t ask about the statements. He knows Martin’s been reading them, from the drained look on his face, from the way he loses focus, from the fact that he had instigated this at the Institute at all. He knows they’re evil, and he’s not interested in knowing anything else. He doesn't care. Not about the statements.

Martin is a different matter. Tim cares about him, cares more than he hates Martin’s insistence that Jon deserves their empathy, just as he’d cared more than he hated his belief that Jon was innocent, and as he knows he’ll care more than he’ll hate him saying that Jon is not a monster.

He wonders, sometimes, in the midnight hours, about Martin. If he’s still as human as he seems, if reading the damn statements has done something to him other than make him tired, make him hurt, make him cry. His early morning self struggles to refute it with memories of Martin’s eyes welling up at those videos of dogs greeting their owners after a long time away, but the suspicion always creeps back in, no matter how piss-poor a monster he tells himself Martin would make.

It’s not something that he likes to think about when Martin’s lying under him, and every shift of Tim’s hips pulls a new moan out of his mouth. It sounds like it might have started off as Tim’s name, once, but the letters have been elided out, to the point where if Tim hadn’t been so familiar with both the word and the situation, he wouldn’t recognise it. But he does, and he turns his face in against Martin’s neck, grinning.

It’s a few stolen hours in the safe room, and Martin will be asleep most of them, holding onto Tim like he’s afraid he won’t be there when he wakes up, but it means something. That’s what he tries to convey, when he pushes deeper into Martin, touches his cheek, threads his fingers into his hair.

There’s a noise from somewhere behind him, like a throat being cleared. He starts, tries to twist around, off Martin, but a pair of hands lands heavily on his shoulders, and pushes him back down over him.

“Please, don’t stop on my account.”

It’s Elias’ voice, and the hands move with the words, thumbs digging at his muscles. Tim tries to duck away from it, bile rising in his throat, but his grip is too firm, and Tim’s head is too blank with shock – Elias has never touched him before, Elias _doesn’t touch_ – for him to think of anything to do against it. Martin squirms, trying to get out from under him, but there’s not enough room, and Tim can’t give him any more.

“You seemed to be feeling a little more reasonable,” Elias says. He moves around just enough for Tim to be able to see him, his hold lifting until it’s just one hand, then fingertips moving down across his shoulder blade. “Perhaps we should have that talk.”

“Get out,” Tim snarls, pushing himself upright, so that Elias’ touch slides off him. “Martin-”

“Stay where you are, Martin,” Elias orders, his voice soft. Tim can feel his eyes wandering down, considering them, making it obvious that he’s doing so. “Tim has some unfinished business. I believe you both do.”

“Piss off.” Tim shoves Elias away from him, and the instant that he makes contact, Martin’s entire body goes rigid, his fingers clawing into the sheets so hard that Tim’s almost expecting to hear the noise of bones snapping.

“Have you considered following my orders at all?” Elias asks, his hand back on the nape of Tim’s neck, pressing at him.

“Martin?” Tim hisses, but Martin doesn’t seem to see him, gaze skewing off towards something behind his shoulder. He’s somewhere else, he realises, seeing something else, Elias in his head and leaving something there, something that’s turned his skin cold. “What have you done to him?”

“I would prefer not to repeat myself again,” Elias says, gesturing as though inviting Tim to go through a door ahead of him. “Carry on.”

“You want me to fuck him in front of you?” Tim means to keep his voice more level than he manages to. It ruptures into silence partway through, but Elias hears it. Tim can tell that from the smile that widens across his face, just as it gives him his answer. He looks back down at Martin, who flinches away from something that Tim can’t see. “But he’s not… I don’t want to, not when he’s-”

A noise gathers itself in Martin’s chest, then spills out of him in a strangled burst that’s less something Tim hears, and more something that ratchets through his skin and takes up residence in his bones.

Elias doesn’t blink.

Tim closes his eyes, and tries to think himself back to a better place. Tries not to hear it, when Martin starts a whispered litany of pleas, tells himself they’re not for him. He jerks at his cock, more roughly than he should, struggling to get himself hard again when that first cry is still indelible against every synapse, ice-water cold.

“Why don’t you think about how he always tells you he loves you afterwards?” Elias suggests, his voice close against Tim’s ear again, breath hot. “I know you like that bit. Not that you’ve told him. Just brush it off, don’t you?”

Martin doesn’t fight him, just lies there as Tim rearranges his legs, lines himself up. He’s too tense, and they need more lube, but Elias is standing between him and it. Tim considers asking him, but he can already feel the denial, as completely as if Elias has put it there himself. Maybe he has.

He screws his eyes as tightly shut as they’ll go, tries to think about everything except Elias’ suggestion, and starts to thrust again. He can’t find any sort of rhythm, especially not when Martin’s pleas dissolve into whimpers, and he starts trying to scrabble away from something that Tim dearly hopes isn’t him. The feelings are all wrong, his instincts struggling to smother the heat gathering in his skin, even as his brain reminds him that he needs it.

“Don’t you think that’s a little unfair, Tim?” Elias asks, too close. Tim wants to lash out at him, wants to force him away, wants to snap at him, make him understand that one day he’ll restore fairness to their little corner of the universe, but now, all he can do is wrap a hand around Martin’s cock and hate himself for it.

Martin comes before he does, spilling out over his stomach. Tim hopes, straw-clutching, that the sensation might have got through to him, helped, somehow, but the rational voice in his head knows that all will come of it is humiliation and pain. He bites his lip as hard as he can, tastes blood, and forces himself faster, trying to ignore Elias’ presence, the slip of the tears down his face.

When he comes, it’s with a violent heat that has him moaning into Martin’s neck in a timbre almost the same as his cries. He could swear that he feels time slow through it, space contorting to leave him trapped there, seconds clotting together, but then he’s lying limp on top of Martin, his rattling breaths harsh against Martin’s skin. When he pulls out, he leaves smears of blood and semen on the backs of Martin’s thighs.

“You’ve made your point,” he tells Elias, not daring to raise his voice. His hand finds Martin’s, gently extracting his fingers from tangle of blankets, only for them to grip onto him so hard that he’s sure he’ll have bruises before the night’s out. “Let him go.”

“And what was the point?” Elias asks, almost pleasant now, a patient teacher struggling to guide a particularly stupid child through a maths problem.

“Please,” Tim tries. He doesn’t know what lesson he’s supposed to have learned, though he’s sure it’s obvious. He doesn’t know anything except the old familiar sensation of a ragged, torn-paper edge in his chest, can’t think past it.

Martin screams. The noise cuts through everything else, raw and wild, and even once it no longer has any voice, Tim can still hear it in Martin’s frayed breathing. He pulls him into his arms, tries to hold him still, because there’s no point trying to hide any of it from Elias anymore. Time finds geological ages before it finally stops. Martin manages a few shaken sobs into Tim’s shoulder, and it actually feels like he knows he’s there again.

“My point,” Elias says, reaching down to peel one of Tim’s hands away from Martin’s back. “Is that killing you or… _fucking off_ are not and have never been my only options.”

“What are you doing?” Tim tries to force it back down towards Martin’s skin, even less willing to let go of him than he is to have Elias touching him. “It’s over, just let me-”

Elias tangles his other set of fingers in Tim’s hair, and yanks him back. Tim shouts, and throws a fist wildly at his face, instinct overcoming the part of him that knows what will happen if he does this. The blow sails past Elias, who fixes him with a disappointed stare.

“Tim,” he says. “I’m not sure you’re empathising enough.”

It hits like a slap of water to his face – there’s a sudden constricting in his chest, his limbs dragging with an exhaustion that he can’t shake. He starts to tremble, and there’s something else in his skull – it feels like pain at first, but then resolves into something more like a steady drumbeat. Knocking, always knocking, waiting for him to answer the door, and perhaps one day he will, he’ll be tired enough to forget and he will. His throat is trying to close up, as though he’s drowning. His head hurts. It doesn’t end. He can feel days of it behind him, and days of it ahead, and any second now he’ll feel something starting to crawl under his skin-

In a place where he isn’t anymore, he hears Martin shouting, the sound of Elias’ fly unzipping. He sees Martin, one hand wrapped around Elias’ wrist, shaking his head, trying to pull him away from Tim. He feels Elias release him, letting himself be moved. He knows Martin shoots him one last glistening glance before he climbs painfully, obediently onto his knees, and he wishes he didn’t.

Tim retreats from it, back into the thicket of terror in his head. It’s too dark to see there – his hands fumble over and over at a light switch that refuses to work, so he can’t make out the few lines of poetry that he scratches out onto his notebook, and it’s probably for the best. He laughs and he cries and he can’t sleep, he doesn’t sleep, he dreams that there is something writhing under the paint on his walls.

He comes back to himself to the sound of Elias letting out a long, contented sigh. He watches as he pulls himself out of Martin’s mouth, then holds him in place a few moments longer, fingers in his hair, like he’s making a point.

“What the fuck was that?” Tim demands, with the first breath he manages to take. He tries to push himself back upright, but his arms are shaking too hard, and he sinks back down again. It’s better that way, he decides. He can see less of Martin’s face from there.

“You know what that was,” Elias tells him. He moves towards him, and Tim tries to squirm away from the press of lips to his forehead, before he remembers himself, and holds his breath to stay as still as he can. “I think my work is done.”

There’s a flicker of sensation in Tim’s abdomen, as Elias pushes his own memories into his head – the familiar warmth of Martin’s mouth, the convulsion of his throat when Elias took him a little too deep, the pressure of his tongue – and he closes his eyes again, an attempt to refuse everything that he is. He doesn’t watch Elias leave in his unruffled suit, tries to forget the noise of the door clicking closed behind him, pretend that he had never had an impact here.

“Tim?” Martin asks. It doesn’t sound like him. Tim risks a glance, and sees that he’s pulled his jumper around his shoulders like a blanket. He makes no effort to join Tim on the bed again, and he shouldn’t. It’s all Tim’s fault, after all, and if Martin doesn’t blame him, then he should.

“What did he show you?” Tim demands, forcing himself up so suddenly that Martin flinches away from him. A part of him wants to reassure him, wants to kiss him. He’ll taste like Elias. Always will, now. They can never do this again, he thinks. Elias has taken every part of it, and made it hurt.

Martin doesn’t look at him. He just pulls the jumper over his head, and mumbles something into the mass of wool that Tim can’t make out.

“Didn’t catch that,” Tim says, and it’s crueller than he means to be, another reason for Martin to hate him now. Maybe it’s no business of his, maybe Elias had just dragged something traumatic out of a complete stranger, but he’s not that kind.

“I’m sorry,” Martin manages, a little more loudly, but still barely a stirring in the air. “I’m really sorry, Tim.”

“You’ve not done anyth-” Tim’s voice fades out, lost in comprehension, before he can finish the assurance. He stares in Martin’s direction, is aware of the shapes that make him up, but he can’t focus. “Danny.”

Martin’s head drops even lower, and he knots his hands into his sleeves.

Tim stands, slowly. Collects his clothes from the floor, where they had abandoned them in the last epoch, and dresses as quickly as he can. Martin doesn’t try to stop him, doesn’t try to talk, doesn’t meet his eyes.

Tim pauses on the threshold, and looks back at him, a huddled, half-naked figure, still sitting where he’d sucked off Elias.

“Would you tell me?” he asks, past the questions trying to bloom in his chest – how exactly Danny had died, if he’d been dead before they had skinned him, whether he’d thought of him, how badly it had hurt. “Would you tell me what happened to him, if I asked?”

Martin stares down at the floor, scratches at the edges of one of the boards. Tim should go to him, he knows, he should hold him, let Martin hold him, try to carry on as though Elias hadn’t infected what they had, as though Martin hadn’t been forced to relive Danny’s death, as though none of it had been his fault.

“No,” he says, and that answers far too much.

Tim doesn’t look back again.


End file.
